ALL employees of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd retired under the civil services rule are government pensioners and have been receiving all the benefits similar to other government pensioners. However, a few years ago, the PTCL withheld the pension increment.

Consequently, the PTCL pensioners agitated against the decision at every forum, and finally it was heard by the Supreme Court on June 12, 2015. A bench consisting of Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk, Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Mushir Alam passed the order in the favour of the PTCL pensioners. However, no payments the PTCL didn’t oblige, and the case thus turned into contempt of court.

After a long period of three years, the case was again heard on February 15, 2018, by Justice Gulzar Ahmed who immediately ordered PTCL to make all the due payments within 15 days. The concerned authorities made the payments but only to a few dozen of pensioners and a large number of other pensioners were left unpaid.

Now that we have a new government that claims to believe in justice, I wish to highlight this case again so that PTCL pensioners could get justice after for more than eight years.

Mehboob Khan

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2019